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Thread: James Kraig Kahler - Kansas Death Row

  1. #11
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    Jury to begin deliberations in Kahler murder trial

    The jury in the James Kraig Kahler murder case are preparing to begin deliberations.

    Kahler is accused of killing his estranged wife, their two teenage daughters and the wife's grandmother in Kansas over Thanksgiving weekend 2009.

    Prosecutors and attorneys for the 48-year-old will make their closing arguments Thursday in Osage County, Kansas District Court.

    Wednesday in court, jurors heard from a psychiatrist who testified Kahler had the ability to deliberate and to choose to kill, even though he was depressed at the time.

    Defense attorneys contend Kahler snapped mentally because his wife was having a lesbian affair and pursuing a divorce. Prosecutors argued the killings were calculated and cold-blooded.

    Kahler could face the death penalty for the fatal shootings at the grandmother's home, about 20 miles south of Topeka.

    Kahler is a former city utilities administrator in Columbia and in Weatherford, Texas. He resigned from his position as Columbia's Water and Light Director and moved back to Kansas weeks before the killings.

    http://www.connectmidmissouri.com/ne...1#.TlZisWPLq_I

  2. #12
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    Well, that did not take long.

    After less than three hours of deliberation, an Osage County jury today returned guilty verdicts of capital murder, four counts of first-degree murder and a single count of aggravated burglary against former Columbia Water and Light Director Kraig Kahler. He was found guilty of shooting his wife, Karen Kahler, 44; their daughters, Emily, 18, and Lauren, 16; and Dorothy Wight, 89, Karen Kahler’s grandmother, at Wight’s home on Nov. 28, 2009.

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/...uple-homicide/

    On a side note, I give props to Brennan David at the Columbia Tribune for excellent reporting on the case. We see so often where journalists write crappy sob stories about the defendants. I am sure Kraig will enjoy El Dorado Max.

  3. #13
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    Sentencing phase in Kahler trial begins

    The sentencing phase of former Columbia Water and Light Director Kraig Kahler’s capital murder trial began this morning with opening statements and testimony.

    An Osage County jury of seven men and five women Thursday returned guilty verdicts for capital murder, four counts of first-degree murder and a single count of aggravated burglary against Kahler. He was found guilty of murdering his wife, Karen Kahler, 44; their daughters, Emily, 18, and Lauren, 16; and Dorothy Wight, 89, Karen Kahler’s grandmother, on Nov. 28, 2009, at Wight’s home.

    The jury will hear opening statements and testimony from forensic psychiatrists and a forensic pathologist. Jurors also will hear from Kahler’s parents and brother in their plea to avoid the death penalty for Kahler. Testimony was expected to end as soon as this afternoon, attorneys said.

    If sentenced to death, Kahler will join eight other men on death row in Kansas. He also could be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

    http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/...-trial-begins/

  4. #14
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    Jury recommends death for Kahler

    James Kraig Kahler showed no visible reaction Monday afternoon as a bailiff announced a jury’s decision that he should receive the death penalty for the slaying deaths of four family members.

    The Osage County District Court jury decided at 3:25 p.m. to recommend the death penalty after deliberating for 55 minutes.

    Kahler’s parents, Wayne and Patricia Kahler, who were sitting behind their son on the front row, also showed no emotion.

    Lynn Denton, a surviving sister of victim Kahler’s wife, sat quietly on the front row behind prosecutors. A supporter patted her on the back as the decision was made public.

    Sentencing is set for 9:30 a.m. Oct. 11.

    Earlier Monday afternoon, an assistant attorney general Monday urged jurors to impose the death penalty, saying each of the four slaying victims died in anguish.

    Kahler’s wife, two daughters and his wife’s grandmother “all died with an awareness that gave them the torture of slow death,” said Amy Hanley, the assistant attorney general.

    They died with the awareness Kahler was armed with a gun, shooting at them and that he intended to kill each, Hanley told the jury.

    “This is the proper case,” Hanley said, to impose the death penalty, pointing to two aggravating circumstances she said justified the death penalty.

    More than one person was killed, and the four victims were murdered in a “heinous, atrocious or cruel manner,” she said.

    “He murdered them all, one-by-one,” she said.

    Jurors were tasked with determining whether to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole. On Friday, they convicted Kahler of capital murder, four counts of first degree murder and one count of aggravated burglary, all tied to the Nov. 28, 2009, rampage in a Burlingame home.

    Before deliberations Monday, defense attorney Amanda Vogelsberg read two notes to jurors from Kahler’s 12-year-old son.

    “I do not want my dad to receive the death penalty because it would be hard on my grandparents,” the first note said.

    The second note said, “I do not want my whole family gone.”

    Defense attorney Tom Haney told jurors there were 12 mitigating circumstances that outweigh the aggravating circumstances. Kahler had no criminal history, he was operating under extreme mental and emotional stress, and he had a severe mental illness that impaired his ability to think and control his actions, Haney said.

    Haney also noted the statement by Kahler’s son, the lone survivor of the family, who submitted two notes to the court, asking his father not be put to death.

    “Do you have mercy for him?” Haney said, referring to Kahler’s son.

    In Kahler’s case, prison would be worse for him than the death penalty, Haney said, noting his suicidal tendencies and a preference for being outdoors. Throughout the trial, witnesses testified about Kahler’s love of hunting, fishing and the outdoors.

    Osage County attorney Brandon Jones asked jurors to think about the anguish the victims felt as they listened again to recordings of one of Kahler’s daughters screaming for help as her father walked through the home. In one recording, she was comforted by an Osage County Sheriff’s officer.

    “I don’t want to die,” the daughter told Deputy Nathan Purling.

    Jones told jurors the number of aggravating circumstances don’t have to outnumber the mitigating circumstances in order for them to impose the death penalty. Haney told jurors if any one of them found the aggravating circumstances didn’t outweigh the mitigating circumstances, there wouldn’t be a unanimous vote to impose the death penalty.

    If the jury doesn’t make a unanimous decision, the judge will impose a life sentence without parole.

    “In this state, we don’t kill the mentally ill,” Haney told the jurors.

    http://cjonline.com/news/2011-08-29/...r#.TlwDQmPLq_I

  5. #15
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    Quadruple Murderer Wants Court-Appointed Attorneys

    A convicted quadruple murderer wants to drop his attorneys for future hearings.

    An Osage County jury recommended the death penalty for James Kraig Kahler, 48, last month, for the shooting deaths of his wife, her grandmother, and his two daughters in November 2009.

    Kahler has reportedly exhausted his funds on his Topeka attorneys Tom Haney and Amanda Vogelsberg.

    Osage County Attorney Brandon Jones tells 13 News the attorneys have filed a motion to withdraw from the case. Chief Judge Phillip Fromme will rule on the motion September 19th. If the attorneys are allowed to withdraw, then the sentencing, now set for October 11th, could be delayed several months.

    http://www.wibw.com/crime/headlines/...129404673.html

  6. #16
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    Quadruple Murderer Argues For Life Sentence

    Convicted quadruple murderer James Kahler wants life, not death.

    Kahler is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for the murders of his wife, her grandmother and his two daughters.

    In a nine-page motion filed in Osage County District Court, Kahler’s attorneys argue the evidence did not support the murders as being vile or heinous, two standards used in death penalty decisions.

    They also argue jurors' passions were so inflamed by evidence in the trial, that Kansas law was followed.

    Kahler wants the judge to reject the jury's recommendation of death and instead sentence him to life in prison without parole.

    http://www.wibw.com/localnews/headli...131368578.html

  7. #17
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    Death seen as likely sentence in 4 Kansas killings

    A man convicted in Kansas of killing his estranged wife and three other family members appears likely to be sentenced to death this week, but if he is, years would pass before a team of officers would escort him into the state's execution chamber and strap him to the gurney.

    A jury in Osage County District Court took only two hours to conclude in August that James Kraig Kahler was guilty of capital murder and less than an hour to recommend lethal injection as his punishment. But the Kansas Supreme Court must automatically review his case, and in other capital cases, that process has postponed executions.

    Kansas hasn't executed a convicted murder in the 17 years since it reinstated capital punishment in 1994, and there's a good chance it won't before marking the 50th anniversary of the state's last executions, by hanging, in June 1965.

    The Sunflower State has a history of ambivalence toward the death penalty, abolishing it in 1907, only to reinstate it in 1935 after a spate of bloody robberies of Midwestern banks. After a U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidated the 1930s statute, supporters of capital punishment waited more than two decades for enactment of a new law.

    "The justices and the people come out of that and look on the death penalty very carefully," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. "There's not quite the rush on executions."

    A sentencing hearing for Kahler, 48, is scheduled for Tuesday morning before District Judge Phillip Fromme, who must decide whether the jury's recommendation for a death sentence is supported by the evidence. But, as defense attorney Thomas Haney noted, no Kansas trial court judge has rejected a jury's recommendation in a capital case since the law was reinstated.

    Kahler, who goes by his middle name, is a former utilities director in Weatherford, Texas, and Columbia, Mo., moving back to Kansas to live on his parents' farm outside Topeka after losing the job in Missouri in 2009. According to testimony during Kahler's trial, his wife, Karen, was having a sexual relationship with a Weatherford, Texas, woman, and seeking a divorce. Kahler's attorneys contend he snapped mentally.

    The victims were Karen Kahler, 44; her grandmother, Dorothy Wight, 89, and the Kahlers' daughters, Emily, 18, and Lauren, 16. A psychiatrist testified during Kraig Kahler's trial that he was upset with his daughters for siding with their mother and believed Wight had a duty to push Karen Kahler to stay in their marriage.

    The shootings occurred the weekend after Thanksgiving 2009 at Wight's home outside Burlingame, about 30 miles southwest of Topeka. The Kahlers' son, Sean, then 10, was at the home but escaped without physical injury and testified that he saw his father shoot his mother. Law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel said Wight and Lauren Kahler identified Kraig Kahler as the gunman before dying.

    Michael Rushford, president and chief executive officer of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a Sacramento, Calif., victims' rights group that supports capital punishment, said Kraig Kahler's case is "clear cut" enough that his appeals should move relatively quickly through state and federal courts, particularly because Congress limited federal courts' review of capital cases in 1996.

    "It's a pretty simple case," Rushford said. "He can't say he wasn't there."

    The record in Kansas capital cases since 1994 has varied.

    A dozen men have been sentenced to die for their killings, but three have had those sentences overturned through the courts and are now serving life in prison. In a fourth case, the state Supreme Court must decide whether a capital murder defendant should be resentenced over questions about his attorney's work.

    Gary Kleypas, convicted of raping and killing a Pittsburg State University student in 1996, has no execution date approaching. The court is considering issues about his death sentence for the third time, with attorneys still preparing legal briefs.

    Legal briefs are still being prepared for six other men's cases, with their death sentences dating from November 2002 to March 2009. In May, the state Supreme Court heard the case of Scott Cheever, sentenced to die for the 2005 shooting of Greenwood County's sheriff during a drug raid, but it has yet to rule.

    The Kansas attorney general's office declined to comment about the length of time involved in death penalty appeals or about Kahler's case, because he hasn't been sentenced.

    But Rebecca Woodman, a state public defender who handles appeals in capital cases, said she doubts Kahler's case will move quickly. Defense attorneys have a greater burden in investigating their clients' cases on appeals that lawyers in non-capital cases, she said, making death penalty cases more complex.

    "The state has to conduct the same type of review," she said. "It's just much more complicated than other murder cases."

    And, even as he saw Kahler's case as straightforward, Rushford acknowledged that states' appellate courts can slow down the resolution of capital cases and delay executions, sometimes simply by giving attorneys years to finish filing legal briefs.

    "The political environment in a state and the makeup of a supreme court can make a lot of difference," Rushford said.

    Critics of capital punishment believe delays in resolving appeals can work in their favor, prompting states to consider whether the death penalty is worth keeping. The cost associated with appeals in capital cases was an issue for Kansas legislators in recent years, though bills to repeal the death penalty law failed in the state Senate in 2005, 2009 and 2010.

    Dieter noted that New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, had no executions in 25 years and abolished capital punishment in 2007. New Mexico executed only one criminal in 30 years before abolishing capital punishment in 2009.

    "It does sometimes add up, when states don't see it going anywhere," Dieter said.

    http://www.kansas.com/2011/10/09/205...#ixzz1aOImXdMP

  8. #18
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    LYNDON, Kan. (AP) — A Missouri man was sentenced to death Tuesday for fatally shooting four family members on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009.

    Osage County Judge Phillip Fromme on Tuesday sentenced James Kraig Kahler, 48, for killing his estranged wife, their two daughters and his wife's grandmother in Burlingame, about 30 miles southwest of Topeka.

    The jury that convicted Kahler in August had recommended the death penalty. Fromme could have sentenced Kahler to life in prison without parole.

    The victims were 44-year-old Karen Kahler, her grandmother, 89-year-old Dorothy Wight, and the Kahlers' two daughters, 18-year-old Emily and 16-year-old Lauren.

    A psychiatrist testified during Kahler's trial that he had been upset with his daughters for siding with their mother during the couple's divorce and that he believed Wight should have encouraged his wife to stay in their marriage.

    Kahler, who goes by his middle name, is a former utilities director in Weatherford, Texas, and Columbia, Mo. He moved to Kansas to live on his parents' farm outside Topeka after losing his Missouri job in 2009.

    According to testimony during Kahler's trial, the couple was divorcing, in part because his wife was having an affair with a woman from Weatherford, Texas. Kahler's attorneys contended that he was out of control emotionally and suffering deep depression when he went from room to room at Wight's home and shot the victims with an assault rifle.

    The Kahlers' son, Sean, then 10, was at the home but escaped without physical injury. He testified that he saw his father shoot his mother. Law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel said Wight and Lauren Kahler identified Kraig Kahler as the gunman before dying.

    During the sentencing phase of the trial, Sean Kahler asked jurors to spare his father's life and not take his entire family from him.

    Kahler's defense attorney, Thomas Haney, argued in a memo filed with the court Oct. 6 that Kahler should be sentenced to life without parole because he had no criminal history and suffered from mental illness brought on by his failing marriage.

    ___

    The case is State of Kansas v. James Kraig Kahler, No. 09-CR-270 in Osage County District Court.

    Online:

    Kansas courts website for Kahler case: http://www.kscourts.org/State-v-Kahler

    http://www.ksro.com/news/article.aspx?id=876112

  9. #19
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    Kansas Supreme Court to take up cases fueling ouster efforts

    By JOHN HANNA
    The Associated Press

    Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994 but has yet to set any execution dates. The state Supreme Court overturned the first seven death sentences it reviewed.

    Since December 2015, the Kansas Supreme Court has upheld three other men’s death sentences.

    Next month, the justices plan to hear the appeal of James Kraig Kahler, who was convicted of shooting his estranged wife, their two teenage daughters and her grandmother at the grandmother’s home outside Burlingame in 2009.

    Another six capital cases are still before the court.

    http://www.salina.com/news/state/kan...59f247478.html

  10. #20
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    Oral arguments set in death-row inmate’s appeal

    By Amy Renee Leiker
    The Wichita Eagle

    Oral arguments in the appeal of a Kansas death row inmate who killed four members of his family will take place Dec. 16, according to a news release from the state Office of Judicial Administration.

    Attorneys for the state and for James Kraig Kahler will each have an hour to argue their sides before the Kansas Supreme Court. Court convenes at 9 a.m. at the Kansas Judicial Center, 301 SW 10th Ave. in Topeka.

    The proceedings will also be broadcast online at www.kscourts.org.

    Kahler, 53, received his death sentence for the November 2009 shooting deaths of his estranged wife, Karen Kahler; her grandmother, 89-year-old Dorothy Wight; and his daughters, 18-year-old Emily and 16-year-old Lauren, after he reportedly became upset that his wife had taken a female lover and filed for divorce. The case was prosecuted in Osage County.

    Kahler raised 10 issues in his appeal. Seven claim errors occurred before and during his trial. The other three attack his death sentence.

    Kahler is one of 10 men currently on death row in Kansas. The last state executions, by hanging, were in 1965.

    http://www.kansas.com/news/local/cri...119462028.html


    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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